Security and billing applications maker VeriSign said Wednesday that it established a new partnership with Microsoft to build authentication services based on the software giant"s Windows Server 2003 product line.
VeriSign says the collaboration will produce tools for enterprise network authentication--or identity verification--that are cheaper and more easily installed than current technologies. The company demonstrated a beta version of the system at this week"s RSA Security conference in San Francisco. VeriSign expects the service to become available to the public sometime this summer.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based software maker is increasing its presence in the burgeoning network authentication space, where it will compete against RSA for corporate dollars. VeriSign has also become a driving force behind Open Authentication Reference Architecture (OATH), a nascent system for user identification and access protection for corporate networks. Using OATH, individuals access a network with a physical "token" that may feature a smart card, a password generator and other tools.